Several years ago I purchased a 6.5 PRC for hunting deer in NC. I purchased some Factory loaded Barnes 127 LRX, shot about a box of ammo and called it good to go. This was before I was into reloading and therefore I don’t have any chronograph data or group size measurements to report.
A few weeks ago I was in my LGS and was looking through the ammo section and found something I hadn’t seen before. It was a factory Berger load with a 140 Elite hunter. I didn’t know they made it 140 Elite Hunter, all you ever hear about is the 156 in 6.5 mm or the 195 in 7 mm. And I found this interesting because not too long before that day I had listened to an episode of the Big Game Hunting podcast where the guest for the day said while he liked Berger Elites, he didn’t like the 156 or 195 because he felt like they were penalized because of their being so heavy that their initial muzzle velocity was just too low.
So took it to the range a few days after and shot four, 3-shot groups. The worst, largest group was 0.507, the best was 0.412, and the other two were solidly in between both being 0.4X. Very impressed, I’m usually not that good of a shot. Was getting 2780 ft per second out of my 22 inch barrel.
My past experience has been that if I can get a factory load to work decently with a particular bullet, I will get a much better result by then purchase that same bullet from a more boutique/custom ammo company like Copper Creek or choice. So I purchased a box from Copper Creek.
Took it to the range yesterday. The first thing I noticed that was different was the group size was tremendously larger. I didn’t actually measure them because they were at least two if not 3 in each and they were almost entirely vertical. The other thing I noticed was that this gun was being very jumpy, coming completely off the sandbag and really pounding my shoulder which I didn’t recall with the previous experience with the factory ammo. I looked down at the chronograph, I was getting 2970.
Only had a short time to get out today but took the factory ammo out again and shot one three shot group back at 2780 and this time it was a 0.332 MOA group. Also back to much more Milder shooting. Just wanted to make sure that the crazy groups from yesterday weren’t something else like a loose scope screw or such.
Did some work with the ballistics calculator. The 2780 ft per second group will carry 2,000 ft per second all the way out to 550 yd. If you’re more of an 1800 ft per second kind of guy it carries that out to 700 yards. Going up to 2970 changes these numbers to 700 yd and nearly a thousand yards each. At least here at sea level and in typical early season temperatures.
And now tying this into the recent video on ethical hunting distance as well as the other recent conversations regarding that and the series that Eric Cortina put on, I’ve got absolutely no business shooting at 550 yards, certainly nothing longer either. Around here you’ll never even get a shot like that unless you just happen to be stationed on a particularly straight section of power line.
Think I’m sticking with the more modest load.